News

"Total investment in the development of rail transport will amount to about 7.7 trillion
roubles by 2025" – President of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov

Oleg Belozerov, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the
Executive Board of OJSC Russian Railways, addressed the opening of the III
Railway Congress now being held in Moscow.

Belozerov summed up the key results of the Company's activities over the past six
years since the last Congress and outlined the main directions for its further development
until 2025. These are aimed at achieving the goal set by the President of Russia:
to achieve GDP increases above the global economic growth rate.

The Chief Executive Officer of OJSC Russian Railways
noted that an unconditional priority would be the rapid development of the country’s
transport infrastructure. At the same time, an important component will be new large-scale
construction.

"The most important thing is that in the coming years, the railway will come to
those regions where it has never previously existed," said Belozerov.

In the first instance, this applies to the construction of the Northern Latitudinal
Railway, one of Russia's largest Arctic projects. In addition, a transport link to
the island of Sakhalin will be the logical extension of the ongoing modernisation
of the railway system in Russia’s Far Eastern region.

According to Oleg Belozerov, the above projects are expected to be financed from
the Company’s own funds and credit resources.

"The total investment in the development of rail transport will amount to about
7.7 trillion roubles by 2025," stressed the Managing Director.

Oleg Belozerov also emphasised that on the passenger side, in addition to high
speeds, comfortable conditions and mobile services, there should be a "seamless" interaction
between all modes of transport so that transfers between trains, planes, city transport
and private cars will become as convenient as possible. To this end, said Belozerov,
it was necessary to pursue the active integration into the urban transport networks.

"I believe that the example of the Moscow Central Ring can be extended to all of
Russia major conglomerations. Our new joint project with the Moscow government –
the Moscow Central Diameters – will take the integration of railways in the
urban environment up to a new level," said Oleg Belozerov.

The head of the RZD Holding went on to stress the need to develop a new look for
the railway stations and change the approaches to the renewal of rolling stock and
the rapid development of high-speed services.

"By 2025, the annual number of passengers travelling on high-speed trains will
approach 25 million," said the Managing Director.

The head of Russian Railways also noted that the key element in the development
should be the Eurasia high-speed freight and passenger main line, which will allow
Russia to occupy a worthy place on the world map of the logistics routes of the future.

"Freight transportation is a very important priority for us. We estimate that loading
volumes will increase by 300 million tons by 2025," Oleg Belozerov said.

The Chief Executive Officer discussed separately
the issue of innovation in the transport industry. Two projects were presented as
examples, the Digital Railway project and the launch of the digital platform Freight
Transportation in test mode.

"Ultimately, we will create a digital model of railway management which will increase
the efficiency of the entire rail complex, and if we look even further – to
2050 – we propose to form a digital model of the country’s entire transport
system," Oleg Belozerov said.

In the course of his speech, the head of Russian Railways also spoke about the
plan to focus greater attention on environmental issues. The proportion of CO2 emissions
caused by rail today is already less than 2% of the total emissions from the transport
sector. Nevertheless, the Holding is working on new types of railway equipment and,
in particular, the use of alternative fuels.

"Our duty is to make the railways home for "green developments," he stressed.

The Chief Executive Officer thanked the Company’s
staff for the great contribution they had made to the development of the Holding and
stressed that Russian Railways guarantees to raise wages above inflation by increasing
labour productivity: by 2025, salaries will exceed the Russian national average by
35%.